The third stable major Linux Kernel update of the year, v. 2.6.13 was released this week. The new kernel includes a long list of updates, a few enhancements and even an odd regression.
Among the new enhancements to the Linux kernel is "Kexec," which allows for a fast reboot without the need to go through a bootloader.

Also included in the new kernel: the Inotify file system event monitoring mechanism. Inotify uses a more efficient API than its predecessor dnotify, ensuring a more granularity of monitoring for performance and security tasks.

Not all patches submitted for the 2.6.13 kernel are new.

"Some revert back to 2.6.12 behavior - you've seen the discussions, and I'm sure we'll end up discussing things further for a long while still, but the plan is to release 2.6.13 with known behavior characteristics," Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote in a mailing list posting about the release.

The 2.6.13 version is the second kernel to be released since Torvalds and the other kernel developers changed from the BitKeeper system to Git for the 2.6.12 release in June That release was plagued by a pair of critical flaws that were fixed just days after the release.